Sleepwalking Land
SynopsisPlot
As the civil war rages in 1980s Mozambique, an old man and a young boy, refugees from the war, seek shelter in a burnt-out bus. Among the effects of a dead passenger, they come across a set of notebooks that tell of his life. As the boy reads the story to his elderly companion, this story and their own develop in tandem. Written in 1992, Mia Couto’s first novel is a powerful indictment of the suffering war brings. Born in 1955 in Mozambique, Mia Couto ran the AIM news agency during the revolutionary struggle. He now lives in Maputo where he works as an environmental biologist and heads the Mozambique side of the Limpopo Transnational Park. In 2007 he was the first African author to win the Latin Union Award for Romance Languages.
Story
About this book
Set during the civil war that tore through Mozambique in the 1980s, Sleepwalking Land follows two displaced people: an old man and a young boy who take refuge inside a burned-out bus. Among the possessions of a dead passenger they find a collection of notebooks containing the story of his life. The boy begins reading aloud to his companion, and the two narratives, the one on the page and the one unfolding around them, start to merge and reshape each other.
Mia Couto published this, his first novel, in 1992, while Mozambique was still processing the consequences of prolonged conflict. The book traces the damage war inflicts on ordinary people and on a country that had only recently gained independence. Couto, born in 1955 in Mozambique, worked as head of the AIM news agency during the independence struggle before turning to environmental biology. He later became director of the Mozambique section of the Limpopo Transnational Park, a cross-border conservation area. In 2007 he became the first African writer to receive the Latin Union Award for Romance Languages.
The novel's structure, two stories braided together through the act of reading aloud, gives Couto room to move between direct experience and memory, between survival in the present and an account of one life already ended.
